One March cheque, three tax treatments
Money arriving at a pool and spa company in March can be a construction deposit, a prepaid opening package or a counter sale, and each follows different rules for HST and for income. Under the Excise Tax Act, a true deposit is not consideration until you apply it against an invoice, so no HST is collectible on the day a build deposit lands. A prepayment for services is the opposite: HST is due when the customer pays, even if the opening happens eight weeks later. Getting the return right starts with knowing which one each cheque was, because the two look identical in the bank feed.
Income tax runs on a third clock. Build revenue is earned as stages complete, service revenue as visits happen, and packages still undelivered at year-end can support a reserve under paragraph 20(1)(m), so income tax follows the work rather than the cash. The books carry those distinctions all year; the T2 only reports them.
| Cheque | HST | Income tax |
|---|---|---|
| Deposit on a new build | None until applied to an invoice | Not income; a liability until earned |
| Stage invoice on a build | 13% on the invoice | Income as the stage completes |
| Opening package sold ahead | 13% when paid | Reserve available for undelivered work |
| Weekly route billing | 13% as billed | Income as billed |
| Chlorine or a hot tub at the counter | 13% at the till | Income at sale, cost through inventory |
T5018s: were you primarily construction this year?
The excavator who digs, the concrete crew, the ESA-licensed electrical contractor who wires the equipment pad and the TSSA-certified gas fitter who connects the heater are all construction subcontractors, and paying them can trigger T5018 contract payment reporting. The obligation applies when construction is your primary business activity, generally more than half your income, and it captures every subcontractor paid $500 or more in the reporting period, filed within six months of the calendar or fiscal year you elect to report on, with amounts including the HST.
Here is the pool-industry wrinkle: the answer can change year to year. A builder-heavy season clears the more-than-half bar easily; a year the chemical counter and the routes carried may not. We test the actual mix before filing rather than assuming, and we collect each sub's business number with the first payment, because chasing nine digits in June for a slip about last February is nobody's best work. If a slip-matching letter arrives anyway, CRA Audit & Review Support answers it from a ledger already organized by subcontractor.
The trade-in on the showroom floor
Hot tub retail carries an HST rule most general preparers never meet. When a customer who is not HST-registered trades a used tub against a new one, the trade-in reduces the amount you charge tax on: 13% applies to the difference, not the full sticker. Ring it wrong and you either overcharge the buyer or remit tax you never collected. The used unit then enters inventory at its trade-in value, and when it resells, HST applies to its full resale price, so the second margin has its own arithmetic. Point-of-sale settings do this correctly once, or incorrectly all season.
What the yard writes off
The dig equipment and the fleet depreciate on different schedules. A skid steer or mini excavator is power-operated moving equipment in Class 38 at 30%; service trucks sit in Class 10, also 30%; pumps, trenchers and shop tools land in Class 8 at 20%. Utility locates, dump fees, fuel and consumables are current expenses. None of this is exotic, but a mixed yard coded into one asset pile misstates every year that follows, so the return is only as good as the asset register behind it, and we keep one that matches what is actually parked behind the shop.
Deadlines met from books, not from memory
The T2, the HST returns on your assigned frequency and the T5018 package each carry their own due date, and a two-season business meets them best from books closed monthly instead of rebuilt in January. We prepare corporate returns as part of Corporate Tax Filing, and where the owner's salary and dividend slips make the two returns inseparable, we file the personal return alongside so they never contradict each other. When we also keep the books through End-to-End Accounting, year-end is an export, not an excavation. Every engagement is quoted in writing after a free 15-minute discovery call, from our Mississauga office for pool and spa companies across the GTA.
